Intensive cropping across Western Australian (WA) grain areas has led to a decline in cropping diversity with associated problems of declining soil fertility, increasing crop diseases and associated dependence on cropping fungicides and reliance on herbicides as the main weed control strategy. Profitable legume breaks, both crops and pastures, are needed to increase rotation diversity and develop …

Conventional soil analyses are expensive, time consuming and unless many samples are taken, only provide information at a single location within a field. Proximal soil sensing offers the opportunity for cheap and rapid soil analyses and can be used to measure across space and in time. This project will provide the grains industry, and thus growers, with intelligence on the state-of-the-art…

The green peach aphid ((GPA), Myzus persicae ) is a cosmopolitan pest of oilseeds and vegetables, causing damage both by direct feeding and by transmitting plant viruses. It is renowned for having developed resistance to more classes of insecticides than any other insect pest. Resistance to the carbamate # insecticide pirimicarb # was detected in Australian GPA for the first time in 2011. Surveys …

The Future National Invertebrate Pest Initiative (NIPI) forums were a vehicle for maintaining the existing NIPI network as an active collaborative community of practice that improves research outcomes and their delivery to industry, capacity to respond to emerging pest issues, and the identification and removal of barriers to the adoption of integrated pest management (IPM). The aim was to…

Biological nitrogen (N) fixation is highly desirable for the economic and environmental sustainability of nutrient limited agricultural systems in Australia. This project developed extension messages that were communicated in articles in industry magazines andcontributions to the Soil Biology Initiative (SBI) II technical report. These messages were based on the findings from the project…

This project's aim was to recruit a new research agronomist for pulse crop research in southern New South Wales (NSW). The new position was advertised across Australia with 24 applicants applying for the position. Interviews and referee checks took place shortly thereafter. Mark Richards was offered and accepted the role.

Organisation: South Australian Research and Development InstituteProject start date:30 Jun 2014Project end date:30 Jun 2015

Free living nematodes (FLN) can be used to measure the status of biological soil health to help growers monitor impacts of soil management practices. FLN communities were characterised in soils across cereal regions in a range of soil types and seasons. Statistical analysis identified five key management practices associated with changes in FLN communities. Twenty FLN taxa were identified as good …

The project provided a report to the GRDC detailing findings and recommendations on future investment in crop protection training for advisers. This will equip the GRDC and regional panels with the detailed understanding of crop protection training needs and requirements, for content development and delivery, and with the capacity and capability to shape and inform a possible future adviser, crop …

This project focused on delivering 48 training workshops nationally across two years from a range of four workshop topics. The workshops topics (the development of which were funded by GRDC) included: Being a Better Boss:Managing People Being a Better Boss:Legal Obligations Technology, Tablets and Tips Farm Office Efficiencies. Participants completed a pre and post workshop evaluation and these…